


Rise above the mist

by nymphori



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Hospitals, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-18
Updated: 2016-05-05
Packaged: 2018-06-02 22:27:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6585079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nymphori/pseuds/nymphori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Unpopular opinion: Bokuto Koutarou likes being in hospital.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

He’s always watching them leave. And he dreads the day it has to happen for him. Koutarou knows that he can’t stay here, it’s not a home, it’s just a room. It feels like home. It feels like what he’s always felt a home is meant to be.

Someone comes and leaves breakfast on a tray at the table next to him. They come in afterwards, while he’s eating. They deposit three small pills on the table, they stay to watch him take them. They smile, big and bright like they should be in a toothpaste commercial. They ruffle his hair and say they’ll be back later to check in on him again.

Koutarou turns the television on, sits back into bed and moves it up so that he can sit back and see the screen that hangs over the end of his bed. The only down side to living here is that breakfast comes too early. He still has to wait an hour and a half before school.

He complains, grumbles, but only in his head.

There’s too much time spent doing nothing here. Usually Koutarou likes it, being able to do nothing. There’s a difference though, he thinks, between sitting and doing nothing, and moving around and doing nothing. He wants to run through the halls, he wants to chase through the grass outside, dodge through cars parked in the lot and throw a ball around with the other kids. He wants to use the gym, to exert all the energy that’s trapped inside of him, but he can’t.

He’s too young to use the gym, and the other people here can’t run around like he can.

Another fun part of being here is meeting so many different people. All with a different story for how they ended up here. Koutarou gets to make so many knew friends, some for just a few days, others for a week; then there are the others that are like him. They’ve been here for weeks like him. Some of them want to leave, to go back home, but Koutarou is happier here than he ever remembers being at home.

 

 

He goes back to his room at lunch, sits down to eat and eyes the still empty bed. No new friends yet, but it’s still early in the day.

He eats everything on his plate, but it is not enough to feel full.

He slips off his bed, careful not to disrupt the colourful quilt folded at the end of it, and tiptoes to the doorway. One nurse is settled behind the station, riffling through papers that Koutarou has no care for, which means the others must be roaming the rooms. Delivering medication and making sure that everyone who is supposed to eat is eating, and that everyone who isn’t remains fasting.

_Taiyou_ , Koutarou thinks, is pretty sure at least, _is fasting today_. He skips down the hall, careful to watch out for nurses - he is allowed in the corridor, he is not allowed to steal peoples food. Apparently they still call it stealing even when they offer it to him, it’s stealing even if Koutarou waits to eat it until they come to take away the empty trays. Koutarou doesn’t consider it stealing, he considers it not wasting the food, but rules are rules.

Taiyou isn’t in his room, only Mizuki.

“Did Taiyou leave already?”

Koutarou avoids looking too longingly in Mizuki’s direction. Too aware of the plate of largely untouched food in front of him. Koutarou won’t ask about it, will only respond to questions about it. Preferably:  _I’m not going to eat it, do you want to?_

Mizuki is meant to eat his food. Mizuki is one of the one’s the nurses check up on to see if he’s been eating his food. So Koutarou won’t ask.

“He got moved forward in the day.”

“Ah.” Koutarou looks at the covered plate that sits on the table, next to the space in the room where Taiyou’s bed usually resides. Taiyou’s quilt is folded up on the padded chair in front of his overstuffed drawers. “I guess that means he’ll be eating when he gets back doesn’t it?”

If Taiyou has gone in early, it probably means that they’ve already switched out his food for something suitable for post surgery. It means they’ve already switched it out for something that Koutarou knows he find particularly appetising. The main meal that is, at least.

“Did he say you could eat his food?”

“He didn’t say that, he just told me he was fasting last night.”

Koutarou does look over to Mizuki this time. Looks away from Taiyou’s covered tray, from the box of juice, from the dessert sitting on the side. _Dessert,_ which Koutarou knows is always better for the ones who are fresh out of surgery. At least that’s what word on the ward is. It’s also possible that it just tastes better because it’s the first thing everyone eats after fasting; after whatever procedure it is they have while they’re in here. To search for something, to fix something.

Sometimes Koutarou wishes he could have surgery. He could get a cool scar maybe, he mostly wants the nice dessert. He wants to know if they can see something wrong with him, if there’s something they can do to fix him.

So far he’s been here a month, and he doesn’t go for surgery, he doesn’t fast like the others. He sits in his bed, he goes to school, he plays games with the others in the recreation room, and sometimes if there are fun people staying they will explore the rest of the hospital.

Koutarou sees Mizuki slicing up his meal with a spoon. Splitting everything in half. “If you only eat this much they won’t know.”

Koutarou finishes it in what feels like seconds, and is rewarded with a high laugh from Mizuki.

“Now you’ve had more food, and they’ll be happy that I ate more!”

Mizuki smiles, and with the flush of his cheeks and the flash of his teeth Koutarou can almost forget about the pale hands, pale arms, pale body connected up to _drip-drip-drip_. _Beep-beep-beep_.

Koutarou thanks him, and runs off before he can be caught in the room. He runs off because he has seen the bag emptying and he knows that soon it will need changing, to be replaced. It’s the sign of someone sick, of someone trying to get better, and it’s something Koutarou hates.

He doesn’t have a bag dripping into him, he’s not connected up to anything. All he gets is a cuff in the morning that squeezes down on his arm, and his temperature read. There’s nothing that says he’s sick. He doesn’t look sick. The only thing that says he’s sick is his own small bed in a room that’s too big. His own small meals in a place where most people don’t eat, can’t eat; but he has a stash of cookies in his bottom drawer for when he can’t find extra food. He doesn’t look sick. He’s just been here for a month with no sign on the horizon of being able to go home.

He still doesn’t really want to go home.

 

 

For school in the afternoon they are doing arts and crafts. Koutarou makes a picture for the baby he saw come in yesterday. She had been so small, so tiny, Koutarou thought she was a doll until she started crying. Koutarou never knew that babies could be so small. He’d been stunned by her, amazed. Amazed that something so small could be so loud; and while others complained Koutarou watched on in wonder. At the smile on her parents faces, the nurses faces. If she could be that loud and so small, it was apparently a good thing.

Koutarou wishes he were smaller, only a little bit. Then if he was loud it would be good. Him being loud wouldn’t make his parents scream, wouldn’t make his dad cry. He never knew that his dad could cry; for ten years, for more, Koutarou had never seen it happen. He has now.

When he finishes his picture he carries it to the baby’s room. He leaves it in the basket outside her door. He can’t go in, he’s not allowed in. Nobody is. But he can see her through the window. Cradled in a giant glass box and sleeping away the day.

He waits in his room afterwards, waits for the doctor to come.

Waits long enough to see the nurses make up the bed next to his, and Koutarou is happy because he knows now, that this afternoon he’ll be able to make a new friend.

His doctor comes before the bed gets filled. The curtains get closed around him. He loses sight of the park outside, of the cars that drive by. The sound of the world gets shut out, and instead he’s left with the tumbling thoughts inside his head.

“Koutarou-kun.” The voice is a distraction.

“Sensei! How have you been? Did you see the baby? She’s so tiny! Did you see that someone’s coming in this afternoon? Do you already know who they are?”

Koutarou takes the placating smile he’s offered. Takes the small box he’s offered as well, opens it up takes out what’s inside. Unwraps and gets to work. Only then are his questions answered.

“I’ve been good. A lot of people left over the weekend so there was a lot of paperwork to keep me busy.”

“I know, school was quiet too.”

“I assume the baby you mean is Akami? I noticed your drawing outside of her room. I’m sure she’ll appreciate it when she goes home.”

“She can’t have it here?”

“No, only when she goes home. I don’t see her though, I only know of her. You could try to talk to her parents when they come by if you want to know more about her. I’m sure they’d love to know what you think of their girl.”

Koutarou smiles, it’s small. He can feel where his cheeks are itching to stretch further, but not right now. He reaches into the box once more.

“I know about the boy that’s coming in this afternoon too.”

“Is he nice?” Koutarou blurts out before there’s a chance for more to be said.

“I haven’t met him yet, I just know about him. Remember to let him settle in a bit before getting too excited. He’ll be new here, and staying for a few days probably. You need to give him some time.”

“Time.” Koutarou repeats. Hand hovering over the box in his hands once more. His doctor faces away from him, and Koutarou takes the time to reach into the box once more, then presses it back into his doctor’s hand before unwrapping.

“Do you want me to bring the game system in? Or maybe you can go and play with some of the others until dinner?”

What Koutarou wants to do is sit and wait. He wants to meet the new boy coming in and then maybe play games with him, or take him up to the main room to play with everyone else together. These are not choices he’s been given, which means these are not choices he should be making.

If he stays in the room, even with a game to play he’s going to be distracted by the freshly made bed next to him.

“I’m going to go out!” 

Koutarou’s answer is rewarded with a smile. Koutarou beams back, proud of himself for choosing the right answer.

His doctor pushes the curtains back, and Koutarou stills from his place in the middle of his bed. The boy has already moved in next to him. He looks pale and small, messy black hair hangs down over his eyes and Koutarou’s eyes are drawn to the bandage wrapped around the crook of his elbow.

“Did you hurt your arm?” He says it before he can think, before he remembers that his doctor said to give the boy some time, some space to breathe.

“No.” A short answer. An answer that says his doctor was right.

His doctor who is watching the interaction, Koutarou hands over the wrappers in his hands. The bin is right there, but it’s his doctor that disposes of them.

Koutarou doesn’t watch this process, he’s used to it. What he watches are the eyes of the boy in front of him. What Koutarou notices are the way they catch on the band-aids plastered over his t-shirt. What Koutarou notices are the way they flicker quickly away, looking instead to the people bustling into the room now.

“I’ll see you later!”

Koutarou checks the head of the new boys bed, but his name hasn’t been written up yet. He’ll check it later when he comes back. He knows it’s better to be introduced first, to get the name then; but Koutarou likes it more when he knows things ahead of time

 

 

The name is up when Koutarou comes back during dinner - via Taiyou and Mizuki’s room to share in another half a meal. Taiyou will probably end up with the other half, but he won’t get in trouble for it. Surgery gives a leeway for these things. It’s another reason Koutarou wishes he had that kind of sickness.

Then he looks at them, really looks at them, and he doesn’t wish that kind of sickness on anyone. Not his friends here, not the people he calls his friends back home. He wants it for himself least of all.

_Keiji_. The board reads. Koutarou doesn’t talk to Keiji when he goes to sit on his bed though, because Keiji is sitting next to his tray of food, not touching it, just letting what must be his mother paw through it instead. Koutarou files this information away: Keiji is someone who doesn’t eat. Keiji is someone who might give Koutarou the food he doesn’t eat.

Keiji is hooked up to a machine now. It drips into the bandage wrapped around the crook of his arm. What Koutarou thought was an injury is just the line, the cannula gripping the insides of his vein and filling him up. Keiji, Koutarou realises, is that kind of sick.

Koutarou turns the television on above his bed, turns the speakers behind his pillow up just loud enough to be able to hear over the voices in the bed next to him and waits. It’s rude to talk to Keiji while his mother is still fawning over him, it’s rude to have the television up too loud in case he interrupts. This means he can hear what they’re saying even though he knows it’s rude to eavesdrop. He doesn’t hear much though. They talk about school, about his parents letting his teachers know where he is, so they can give him some work.

Koutarou pulls a face that he hopes they don’t notice, because it doesn’t fit at all with the movie on the screen.

But why? Why when they have the chance to be here? To go to school and read books and play games and draw-- Why would someone want to send in for real school work to do?

Keiji’s mother doesn’t leave until the nurses come by at night, not until they hand Koutarou three small pills and watch him take them. Not until Keiji has all his own measurements taken, so many more than Koutarou gets done; and Koutarou files the information away: Keiji is that kind of sick, but they don’t know what it is yet.

Koutarou falls asleep to a different movie playing through his ears, and wakes to it all turned off; wakes only to the steady rhythm of Keiji’s _drip-drip-drip_ , life pushing into him.

He pushes one curtain to the side, sees that the sun is already in the sky, he pushes his other curtain to the corner. To let the nurses know that he’s awake, to let Keiji continue to sleep.

He turns the television on, and makes sure the volume is down to zero. It tends to blare in the morning, the boy two friends ago had always woken up even when it was set to one. It made them stop being friends, and Koutarou isn’t going to let Keiji go so easily. He’s not going to let this friend run away before they have a chance to be real friends.

Especially not when Keiji is someone who doesn’t eat.

It’s going to be sunny today. A sweltering wet heat. That doesn’t matter here.

Breakfast comes, and with it comes the nurse bearing three white pills. On her way out she pulls open all of the curtains all the way, she ties them back and Koutarou looks at the boy in the bed next to him. Pale, sleepy, looking warily at the bag the nurse carries back in, slung over her arm. Koutarou watches them switch it, like it’s a medical show he’s watching, like it’s not real life. By the time the nurse leaves, after a whispered conversation with Keiji that is too low to hear, Koutarou has finished eating.

After ten minutes that feel like ten hours, Keiji has only had a sip of his tea. Koutarou stares at the rest of his plate. Untouched, unmarred; Keiji doesn’t even spare it a second glance. He tilts his bed up so that he’s sitting, pulls a book to his lap and reads.

Koutarou shouldn’t interrupt reading, but Koutarou also doesn’t want to let a whole plate of food go to waste. Koutarou shouldn’t interrupt Keiji’s reading, because Koutarou wants them to be friends, and interrupting doesn’t seem like the right way to go about that.

Koutarou turns away from temptation, maybe he’ll try again at lunch time. He turns the television off and runs down the corridor to the recreation room.

Taiyou is already there, typing away on the weird machine that is their excuse for a computer. Koutarou pulls another machine over, and starts playing a game instead.

“You got a new person right? I heard the nurses talking about him.”

“Yeah.” Koutarou presses down the button that lets his character jump over a spike, presses another so that he ducks under the next one. “I haven’t talked to him yet, his parents were here all day yesterday.”

“A really new person then.”

“He didn’t eat either, I wonder if he thinks it’ll taste bad.”

“Does this mean you’re not going to eat with us any more?”

Koutarou watches the screen flash, his character falls and gets transported a few screens back. _Two lives remain_ flashes across the bottom corner. “He’s new though, so the doctors will probably be in a lot today.”

“Is he coming to school.”

“Probably. He told his parents to bring him in school work.”

“Why?”

“ _I know_.” Koutarou’s screen goes dark. He holds down on the button that lights it up. A maze. The light burns out and Koutarou presses the button again. A bar flashes red across the bottom, it needs to charge. “I would never ask for school work!”

“I didn’t know there were people out there who would.”

“Some people must like school.” Koutarou muses.

Taiyou makes a gagging noise. Koutarou turns to see his face, to check that it’s on purpose and not something he has to press the buzzer for. Taiyou is fine, and being a good friend has Koutarou turning back to the screen and _one life remaining_. At least he made it to a checkpoint this time.

Koutarou pushes the joystick forward, presses down to jump over a bridge, and tilts his controller side to side as he manoeuvres his character through the difficult process of getting the bridge to swing. It’s not high enough, he survives a fall from the bridge and has to backtrack to get back on it again. Contrary to popular belief, not even his third attempt to jump up the cliff is lucky.

“Are you coming to school?” Taiyou asks. Koutarou doesn’t even know when the tapping of his keys stopped, for the moment he only knows the swinging of his own body in time with the bridge on screen in front of him.

“I’ll come the next time I die.” Not the next level, because Koutarou’s never beaten this level, because Koutarou knows that it’s being overly optimistic to think that it will happen now of all times.

Taiyou drags his hand through Koutarou’s hair on the way out, he leans in to it a little, enjoying the friendly touch, but keeps his focus on his game. The cliff is right there and he can do this.

 

 

Keiji isn’t in the classroom when Koutarou shows up. Koutarou was hoping to sit with him, but instead contents himself sitting with the group of girls he usually spends the mornings with. He’s handed a sheet of paper, a book, and some pencils. Koutarou copies out the kanji diligently, taking care in where he places each stroke, and wondering why it is that the girls with him are so much better at this than he is. Have they already done it at their school? Koutarou hasn’t, not these ones, not yet.

He’s envious of where Taiyou and Mizuki sit talking together, if only he were a few years older he could be sitting with them instead of the girls he has to study with in the mornings.

When he gets back to his room for lunch he finds Keiji. Well, he finds the curtains pulled around Keiji’s bed, voices spilling from behind. Koutarou drags his entire table out of the room with him and walks with it down the corridor to sit in Mizuki and Taiyou’s room. He will give Keiji privacy, give the doctor privacy.

It has nothing to do with the half a plate of food that Mizuki once again pushes over to him. Koutarou doesn’t even have to hide this time. With his own table and his own tray he scoops up what Mizuki passes over and settles it on his own plate. The nurse comes in, changes Mizuki’s bag, praises him for eating well and is none the wiser. Koutarou feels bad for deceiving him, but only a little.

He wheels the table back to his room before heading back to the classroom. Gets to see Keiji sitting on his bed with a book in hand, sees his father next to him and picking through the food on Keiji’s tray.

“Hello!” Koutarou chirps as he walks through. Keiji smiles at him, and Koutarou locks on to the straight teeth he is presented with. Keiji has a nice smile, Koutarou is going to make him smile more. His father returns the greeting, but already Koutarou is moving on. “Are you going to come to school this afternoon? We’re painting the rooms!”

Keiji stops smiling. Already Koutarou has failed at his task.

“See you later!” He runs from the room.

He sprints down to the classroom. He doesn’t look at Keiji, doesn’t look at his father, just vows in his head with every slap of his feet on the linoleum floor that he will try and get Keiji to smile more later. To smile for longer.

Already in the classroom people are crowding around a box of paints placed at the front of the room. Pastels, neons; all of them bright. Koutarou pushes his own way into the crowd, picking out soft colours to match the room he wants to paint. To match the sole inhabitant of the room he wants to paint. He’s happy that he even knows her name now.

When he gets to her door, he doesn’t draw, just paints, creates. He stencils her name in the centre of the window in pale yellow. He draws a spiral out from the characters in pink, feeding more yellow into it as he goes. The sun rising around her name, beaming down on the life she has to live, shining it’s light over everything she has ahead of her. Lighting up for her next day; and her next and her next and her next--

“I should have known I would find you here.”

Koutarou turns, splashing paint over himself and the floor, but luckily not over the person who is interrupting.

“Is it that time already?” Koutarou doesn’t feel like he has been painting for very long at all.

“Don’t worry, I’m very early today.”

Koutarou looks down, at the paint on his clothes, at the splatters on the floor. He picks his eyes up and is flooded with horror for the pink spray that made it onto the door. Akami’s door. She is going to hate him.

“How about I grab some cloths and you can keep painting then we can talk out here while you clean up?”

Koutarou doesn’t answer, just stares at the door. This was meant to be something nice, something happy. Something to make her parents smile even though they can’t take her home, something to make her smile even if she doesn’t know what it is for yet. Koutarou wasn’t meant to ruin it, ruin everything. Her parents are going to come in and see a messy door and think that Akami isn’t being looked after properly. But they are, she is so well looked after. Everyone here is. Koutarou knows because he gets told how hard he is to take care of-- How hard, how difficult, how exhausting-- He always makes a mess of everything.

A hand appears in front of him. “Look, it wipes right off. There’s nothing to be worried about Koutarou-kun.”

He ignores the hand, and looks at his feet. As expected the box is there. He rips into it, disposes of the wrappers on the floor before he can think. Four in their regular place, one for each splash of paint on him, three for the door which he ruined.

“My, how lovely.”

Another voice, Koutarou turns to see two new people to witness his failure, and he runs.

He runs in to see Keiji sitting on his bed, reading again. His mother is there now, reading as well. Koutarou doesn’t take the time to think about how similar they look like this, the thought  passes straight through, the same way he does. Picking up his quilt, something special, something new, something his. Something precious that he can’t ruin. Something colourful to brighten up the room. Something bright to flood the darkness creeping in from the edges of his mind.

He pulls his table to the window and sits down under it, draping the quilt over it behind him.

He can see the wind through the window. He can watch it catch at people’s hair and sweep through the leaves scattered in the shadow of the building. He can’t see the sun, not at this time; only the light it has left to cast after it’s long journey through the sky. It won’t be dark until dinner, there is still time for him to drown in the light.

There is light in front, and colour behind him; and Koutarou clenches a fist over the band-aids at the centre of his chest. There’s no wound to cover but they help, they focus his attention. This is where it hurts, but _they_ heal. He is here to heal. There is light in front and colour behind him.

 

 

The next thing Koutarou knows is that it’s dark, and he is hungry.

The curtains have already been drawn around Keiji’s bed, and Koutarou tallies up another failure - he was meant to make Keiji smile, he hasn't been able to. The only consolation is the food left on a tray on his bed. They left it for him this time, even if judging by the curtains it must be well past the collection time. Koutarou will have to thank the nurse that comes in later, the one who will need to feed him three white pills, the one who will undoubtedly check on Keiji to see how he’s doing, they will have to at least come to the room for that, even if this time is the time where they decide to give up on him.

They won’t be the first.

His food is cold, the rice dry, but Koutarou eats it all. Eats it all the way through to the small piece of cake that must be dessert, the biscuit that must have come from the evening cart, and the bowl of fruit that Koutarou doesn’t usually see outside of breakfast time. He eats it all.

When he is done, he picks his quilt up from the table and lies under it atop his bed. He goes to his drawer, to the things he keeps buried apart from these times when he needs them. He pulls out headphones, the small player that holds only his favourite movie and a collection of his favourite songs. It also holds the book his mother used to read out loud for him, however it’s not the same when the story lacks her voice. Koutarou has only read it through once since her passing. Still, he keeps it with him, among these other things.

Halfway through the movie, he pauses it to thank the nurse who comes in to clear his things away. He swallows three pills with a glass of water. The nurse ruffles her hand through his hair and he sighs.

Koutarou sighs and the motion pulls tears from his eyes. They don’t hate him, not yet. He isn’t too much, not yet. They still care, for now.

The nurse sits down at the end of the bed, she is not one that Koutarou has seen before.

“What movie are you watching?” Koutarou doesn’t think he can answer, not without the tears that trace his face giving way to the wail buried deep in his throat. He doesn’t want to wake Keiji up. He taps the screen and the title flashes along the top left corner.

“Wow, I’ve always wanted to watch this movie! Is it good?”

Still wary of speaking, Koutarou nods his head so fast it starts to hurt. He stops and looks back to the nurse with a broad wet smile across his face.

He drags his finger across the top of the screen. The titles move slowly, the credits rolling in. Koutarou moves himself, moves his quilt with him, and he and the nurse both sit there, at the end of his bed, at the beginning of the move, to watch it all play through.

With impeccable timing as the screen fades to black Koutarou is jolted from his halfway state of slumber by alarms blaring in the bed next to him.

“Don’t worry.” The nurses hands are in his hair again, soothing, consoling something in Koutarou. “He’s fine, he probably just turned over in his sleep.”

She rushes off, and Koutarou finally feels the pull of the other world, drifting off to the land of dreams at the end of his bed beneath the quilt that is now his world. The colours pull him into their warm embrace, pull the thoughts from his head, pull his eyes closed.

 

 

In the morning, Keiji has his own quilt. Blues and greens merging together like the deep ocean tides. The deepest part of it matches his eyes. How has Koutarou not noticed what intense colour they hold before?

“Are you coming to school?”

“No.”

At lunch time Koutarou knows why, he knows it with the missing bed, with the quilt folded up on the chair that one of his parents seems to always occupy. Today is the day where they find out what’s wrong, where they will try to at least.

Koutarou hears the bed wheeled back in from behind his curtains, where his doctor sits and talks to him in a low, calm voice. It’s low and calm but Koutarou knows what it really means, it means that yesterday was a relapse, a relapse when things have been going so well.

Both of Keiji’s parents are with him when Koutarou’s doctor leaves and pulls the curtains open. He has two bags attached to him now, one in each arm. Sick, very sick. Koutarou wants to know what's wrong, but he would rather ask Keiji. Keiji, who he really hasn’t been able to talk to since he came in. Keiji, who doesn’t come to school, but sits and reads with his parents all day. Keiji, who doesn’t eat, but has one of the nicest smiles that Koutarou has ever seen. Keiji, who is here for the first time and has a quilt that matches his eyes.

Koutarou feels sorry for him. His own first time in hospital, he hadn’t stayed long enough to need a quilt, to get a quilt. Keiji’s first time here and he has one, it must be scary. Even if Keiji doesn’t know what it means.

Koutarou sleeps early, tired from his late night. Somewhere between closed eyes and parted curtains he pictures Keiji’s smile.

 

 

He sleeps early, but Koutarou does not sleep well. He wakes too often to alarms from the bed next to his, and only two of the alarms are those he recognises as the call for the bag to be refilled, they are not the only ones. The other alarms are accompanied by a cry, of pain, of agony, but most importantly Koutarou recognises that the cries are spilling from Keiji’s mouth. Quiet Keiji, who doesn’t go to school but sits quietly. His cries are loud, they cut evenly through the alarms.

Koutarou wants to join him, to sit next to him in the chair by his bed and carve a path through Keiji’s hair with his hands; the same motions used to calm him down. For the moment though Keiji is only his room-mate, they have still never talked enough to exchange names, Koutarou only knows it from the sign above his bed, but that is not an invitation to use it.

Both of the nurses come, they check on Koutarou too, to see how he is fairing through his neighbours cries. Koutarou has never felt less sick, he knows where his pain lies and knows a little of where it’s born. He doesn’t know where Keiji’s comes from, why he’s sick or why he’s here. He doesn’t know what pain burst forth to have such loud noises from such a quiet mouth. He doesn’t know. He wants to know.

His last meagre attempt at sleep has him waking early in the morning. Koutarou opens his side curtain and it’s still dark outside. He sits and watches the sun greet the world, and turns to greet the nurse that comes in.

“How is he?”

Koutarou is given a placating smile before the nurse turns to make his bed. “He’s fine now.”

“What happened last night?”

“He kept blocking up his drip.”

“Is he okay? He was crying.”

Another smile and the nurse sits, Koutarou sits on the bed next to them. The same one, he finally notes, that watched the movie with him. “They took biopsies while he was under yesterday to see what’s wrong, they can be uncomfortable and he was probably just trying to get into a position that made him more comfortable but ended up blocking the line, and that can be painful.”

Koutarou swallows, thinking, _poor Keiji_. Two painful things. He wants to be better friends now, so that they can play together and eat together and so that if it happens again Koutarou can pull his hands through Keiji's hair and make him forget about the pain and focus on Koutarou's hands. He wants to make Keiji smile again. Surely the smile fits on his face better than the tears and crying that he had suffered with through the night.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Poor boy,” the nurse says, casting a look over her shoulder at the curtains pulled closed between their beds. “He was so small when he came in, did you see him? He hasn’t been eating for a while, his body nearly gave out on him. If he hadn’t come to us when he did he might not have made it.”

She smiles, but Koutarou doesn’t know how to after hearing what he’s heard. How can he smile knowing that Keiji nearly died?

“That’s what we’re here for though. We’ll find out what’s wrong and help him get better! Just like we’re going to do with you. Are you ready to go home yet?”

“No.” Koutarou answers automatically, quickly. The truth of his words, the conviction of his voice, has the nurse giggling.

“No you wouldn’t, you like it here don’t you? You’re a strange one Koutarou.”

_Strange_ she says, but Koutarou doesn’t feel offended by her words. Not when he likes it here. Not when he gets to make new friends and play, and where school isn’t just the teacher yelling at him what feels like all the time. He’s heard enough talk around him at school, listening in to other peoples conversations to know that the hospital isn’t somewhere that he should enjoy being. He likes it here though, it’s fun, and if that makes him strange at least the nurse doesn’t seem to be implying it in a mean way. Koutarou knows what that sounds like.

She stands with a smile and leaves. The curtains around Keiji’s bed flutter in her wake. Flutter and pull and Koutarou knows that the boy behind them is awake. He pulls the curtains open himself, without asking, because he knows. Koutarou knows that if Keiji is awake now, that he’s been awake for a while. That he’s been awake to listen to their discussion and if Koutarou has learned anything from being here, he’s learned that they don’t tell the children themselves how sick they are.

Keiji has just learned how sick he is, was.

And Koutarou has just learned what the chaos from last night was.

Two boards are strapped to his arms, both of his arms. Struck out so straight that Koutarou is amazed Keiji even made it out of bed to get to the curtain. The other thing that amazes him is the look in Keiji’s eyes. Red rimmed, dull from the night he’s faced, from the words he’s just heard, but still, there is a firm set to them that says he isn’t going to let it get to him.

Koutarou finishes pulling the curtain open, and even though Keiji has his own chair next to his bed Koutarou drags his own over. 

“Here! Sit down and I’ll get the nurse to unstrap you. Now that you’re not asleep you shouldn’t need them!”

Silent, quiet. Keiji nods, takes the seat and Koutarou runs for help.

 

 

“Someone came to visit you.” Keiji says when Koutarou comes back to the room for lunch. Koutarou looks at the bed, sees the box placed atop his pillow. He knows who came to visit. “A lady, she said she would come by again later.”

Koutarou nods his head. It’s a Friday, she always comes on Friday.

“Are you staying for the weekend?” Koutarou asks. Keiji pauses before he answers, not to think of his answer, but to acknowledge that Koutarou is changing the conversation. Koutarou can read it in his eyes. It’s strange, how good he’s gotten at that, considering that this is the most they’ve talked and one of the first times Koutarou has seen Keiji in the day without someone at his bedside.

“I must be,” Keiji says, “they haven’t told me what’s wrong yet.”

Koutarou jumps onto the foot of Keiji’s bed before he has time to think about what he’s doing. “We should play this weekend! There’s no school and Mizuki always goes out with his family during the day!”

“So I’m a backup to being lonely?”

Koutarou feels himself freeze, that isn’t how it was meant to sound. He’s just really excited about the possibility of spending time with Keiji, but Keiji never seems interested. Keiji seems closer to his age though, spending time with Taiyou and Mizuki is fun but they have _more_ fun doing different things.

“That isn’t what I meant at all!” Koutarou is almost shouting now, he misses the smirk that crosses Keiji’s lips because he’s too focused on forcing his meaning without putting actual force in his words. “We haven’t played together at all and you’ve been here nearly a week! I thought we would have been friends by now and now we can be!”

“Sorry.” Keiji says, he stops, looks around the room, focusing on the entrance to the space they share together. “My parents worry a lot and they don’t want to leave me alone.”

“That’s strange.” Koutarou voices, hopefully in the same way the nurse called him strange this morning. Not to be mean, just an observation of something that is different to normal. “The hospital is for getting better, it’s safer here than anywhere they don’t need to worry. My parents never worry when I’m here because there are so many people working hard to look after me!”

“I guess not everyone sees it that way. My parents see it as me being sick, and so they worry.”

“How old are you Keiji?” Koutarou claps a hand to his mouth. It’s the first time he’s used the name to this person. The name he knows but hasn’t been introduced to. The name he uses in his head but has never been given permission for use of it outside his head.

“I’m eleven, why?”

“Eleven!” Koutarou shouts for real this time. “I’m older than you but you seem so much smarter than me! The words you just said were like something an adult would say!”

“How old are you Koutarou?”

“I’m a first year in junior high!” He answers, holding up one finger to match the year.

“So you’re thirteen. Should I be calling you Koutarou-senpai then?”

Koutarou shakes his head. “Just Koutarou is fine, because we’re friends, right Keiji!” Koutarou hopes it’s not important that he’s starting the friendship with a lie. He’s not thirteen, not yet, not until his next birthday but he’ll seem cooler if Keiji thinks he’s older.

“Koutarou it is then.”

Koutarou smiles. Harder than he has in a long time, maybe harder than he can ever remember smiling. It pulls at his cheeks, it hurts, it makes Keiji turn away pink with embarrassment. Koutarou turns his own gaze away, giving him space. He spots the box on his bed and further across the room is a tray set up on his table. “I almost forgot!” He jumps straight from Keiji’s bed to his own, holding on tight to the covers as the brakes in the wheels adjust for the sudden movement. “It’s lunchtime!”

This is his best lunch ever. He made a new friend who he got so carried away talking to that he almost completely forgot it was lunchtime. There won’t be enough time for him to run to Mizuki’s room to take some food, but the warmth in his chest at finally speaking to Keiji after all these days covers up the rumble in his tummy. “Do you want some of my food?” The warmth in his chest bubbles over because now his new friend is offering him food.

Koutarou relocates to Keiji’s bed, dragging his table with him. They sit across from each other and Koutarou eats while Keiji sips at his juice, at tea, and finally peels back the lid of some kind of milkshake to drink. He has two of them. Koutarou moves his cutlery from his tray to Keiji’s tray, and with the small smile he gets at the movement Koutarou doesn’t bother moving back to his own. He eats straight from Keiji’s tray.

He stays there, talking to Keiji until the doctor comes to see him. Koutarou smiles before the curtain gets pulled around, and doesn’t even mind when his new mum comes in to sit at the end of their discussion.

 

 

Being friends with Keiji is great. He never went to school but now that it’s the weekend Koutarou doesn’t go to school either. He wakes up early in the morning and waits, watching through the window, at people and the world moving past until he hears that Keiji is awake too. When he hears the shuffling and quiet panting breaths Koutarou pulls the curtain all the way open.

“Good morning!” He says, loud and clear. Keiji replies in a much quieter voice. “I’ll go get a nurse to take the straps off!”

And Koutarou feels like he must make a good impression, because only a day after being friends as Keiji is unclipped from his bags and has plastic ones wrapped around his arms instead he asks Koutarou to join him.

“Are you sure?” The nurse says. Keiji nods with conviction, while Bokuto nods slower. He is fine, they are friends, this is proof of that. He just hopes that after Keiji showers they can play together. He still has two bags but Koutarou can push at them and together they can walk around and explore.

Keiji hides, and Koutarou doesn’t mind. It’s a lot to show someone beneath running water and pouring steam. Koutarou just talks, keeps talking through it. Talks about the other people that he has shared the room with, talks about what he watches on television and through the window, he talks about his life at home and how he still has to get used to having a new mum, he talks about his favourite food and how his dad promises to take him out for it when he leaves. Keiji tells him that his parents promised him the same thing, but he isn’t allowed to eat for two months. Koutarou doesn’t ask why, just takes it in as a part of the _getting better_ thing. Keiji doesn’t eat, but he’s not allowed to. That means that Koutarou can eat for him, but it also means that Keiji might want to eat - not being allowed to is different from Mizuki who doesn’t want to. Keiji probably does.

Koutarou turns the water off and pats Keiji down everywhere he can, everywhere that Keiji lets him. He passes the towel over then and Keiji does what he can with his bagged up hands. Koutarou helps him pull on his clothes and when they emerge from the bathroom breakfast is waiting for both of them. Koutarou sits himself down once more on Keiji’s bed and turns the weather on. Keiji sips on his juice, his tea, his milkshake and Koutarou eats all of the food on both of their trays. He’s allowed to.

Afterwards, Koutarou waits for Keiji to get plugged back in and instead of playing they start with exploring, because he learns that Keiji hasn’t even walked himself down the corridors.

Koutarou takes him to the recreation room. Filled up with consoles and those strange computers. Taiyou sits in there, typing away at one. “He’s talking to his girlfriend!” Koutarou whispers conspiratorially into Keiji’s ear before he bursts out laughing. Keiji tries to shush him, but it doesn’t work. Taiyou looks over and only offers them a wave which Keiji shyly responds to, and then they are on the move again.

“The consoles are actually portable, before you moved in I used to keep one in my room up until curfew but you struck me as someone who likes quiet so I haven’t done that this week.”

“There’s a curfew?”

Koutarou nods. “They take them back at curfew, and one night I couldn’t sleep so I snuck out to bring it back in. When they checked on me in the night though they found it and I got in trouble.”

“Were they angry at you?”

“No, they just said that I should have thought more about the other person trying to sleep. Dad brought me in the portable player after that though so that I had something to do and it comes with headphones!”

Koutarou pushes Keiji’s machine next to him, and leads him around the rest of the floor. He shows Keiji the classroom where he spends the day, and they even tiptoe their way down to where the babies stay. He shows Akami off to Keiji, through splatters of paint on the window.

“She’s so tiny.” Keiji whispers in awe.

“I know!” Koutarou replies, voice coloured with an equal amount of wonder. “And she’s real!”

He pulls Keiji out and through other places. Through the waiting area where fish swim in the wall. Down the elevator to where all of the grandparents live. He shows off the gym which he’s not allowed to go to, but it’s empty when they go down. They travel further and further, Koutarou pushing along Keiji’s bags, the _beep-beep-beep_ following them, winding round and round, up and down side corridors. They peek into bedrooms, some bright and with smiling faces in the beds and others with curtains drawn closed.

The final stop they make is around a corner full of misty lights. Koutarou almost feels like he’s in a fairytale. It’s cold, he pushes at Keiji’s bag with one hand and reaches for his hand with the other. He’s not scared, he just knows that whatever is going to be around the corner is unsettling. It is. Pale, unmoving, cold, _it’s so cold_. There’s one person bustling around the cold, cold room but Koutarou eyes are locked on the person on the bed. Pale, unmoving, cold, so cold.

He squeezes at Keiji’s hand and pulls him back harder than he should given the needle stuck in his arm. But Keiji just looks at him with a face filled with the same kind of fear Koutarou feels climbing through his entire body.

He pulls Keiji down the corridor to the nearest elevator and pushes the button. He pushes the button down a lot, fast, once for every rushed beat his heart makes in the centre of his chest, but it still feels like forever until the doors are stuttering open.

Koutarou knows what floor they live on, and he presses down on that button the same way. It doesn’t make the elevator move faster, but it makes him feel better.

Back in their room they sit close together on Keiji’s bed and Koutarou turns the television on. They eat in silence, they watch the screen in silence. Koutarou doesn’t want to talk about what he saw to anyone ever again.

 

 

Apart from that small hiccup, the weekend moves smoothly. Keiji spends time with him, his parents come in for the afternoons, but the rest of the days and nights are theirs to spend together. They never leave their floor, they rarely leave Keiji’s bed. They watch movies and tell stories and Keiji reads aloud from the book he’s always reading. They huddle up under the covers, with hushed voices and caught breaths as the people in the book make love. “It’s an adult book,” Keiji says, and that his parents trust him. Koutarou doesn’t know what that trust involves, he finds the clandestine nature of their reading exciting, but these are the scenes he hides his eyes for in movies. He doesn’t like them.

On Sunday night Koutarou bravely ventures alone down through the elevator with coins in his hand and good news fresh in his ears. Keiji doesn’t know, it’s a secret, it’s a surprise. Koutarou orders the drink from the cafe and waits five minutes for it to be made before he grabs a straw, the drink and keeps a careful eye on the steps he takes back towards the elevator. Once safely concealed within the four metal walls Koutarou lets himself smile Keiji will be happy. Just carrying in it his hand Koutarou can smell how good it tastes. Mango and raspberry swirling together, combined to create something delicious. Something that will make Keiji smile.

And he does. Not at first, at first he apologises, saying that he isn’t allowed anything except what they bring for him. When Koutarou says that he asked specifically if Keiji could have the smoothie, that is when Keiji smiles. Loud and full and beaming with a brightness that Koutarou rarely sees in his own smile. He’s seen it a lot these last two days though, he’s felt it a lot. He wonders if Keiji’s cheeks hurt just as much at the pull of his lips.

It’s a gift, it also turns into goodbye.

 

 

Koutarou knows what it means when both of his parents show up to his room. His dad, his new mum, together. It means that it is time to go home. It means that his holiday is ending. It means saying goodbye to his friends, to this school. To everything that he loves.

He loves it for a time. He also loves being home, he does. He loves the dog he walks in the morning, he loves the wind in his hair and being able to run around outside. He loves home cooked meals and sitting together around a table. He loves being home, but it always comes with the feeling of missing here; missing the people whose job it is just to look after him, missing the friends he makes and gets to live with every single day. He always misses it, always, at least initially.

Especially now. He only got to be friends with Keiji for a weekend, and now they’re leaving. And Koutarou worries, not for himself, but for Keiji. Because Keiji is quiet, is silent and beautiful and he doesn’t go to school here. When Keiji gets a new room-mate he won’t talk to him, he won’t make a new friend. Koutarou knows that once he leaves Keiji will sit and read and he will still be happy, because his parents will come, one for the morning and the other in the afternoon. But Koutarou is sure that Keiji had more fun with him over the weekend.

Over the weekend Koutarou finally got to make Keiji smile, got to keep that smile on his face. Straight white teeth showing through dark lips set in pale skin. Green eyes shining like the sun glinting off of waves in the ocean.

Koutarou finally got that, and now it’s gone. He’s leaving it behind.

“Keiji!” Koutarou calls out. His mum is sitting with him, and Koutarou’s own parents walk ahead, they go to sort out the rest of the paperwork, they leave Koutarou to his friend. This is not the first time this has happened, it is unlikely to be the last time it happens. This is all part of the drill, his dad knows this, his new mum will come to know this. “I think you were my favourite friend while I was here. I’m sorry Keiji’s mum I know you’re worried about him but I’m really glad he got sick so that I could meet him! I really do hope you get better though!”

Koutarou hugs Keiji, just around his leg because he’s too full of motion to navigate the lines running down to the bandages in his arms.

“I hope we see each other again!”

“That would be nice Koutarou.” Keiji says in return, and Koutarou smiles once more, knowing now that Keiji really does think of him as a friend as well.

With a final squeeze Koutarou lets go, he rushes down the corridor to wave a goodbye to Taiyou and Mizuki. He turns the other way to have one final look at where Akami lies in her glass case. He bypasses the exit to say farewell to Keiji. The first and last of his goodbyes today. Something that will make Koutarou remember him, the quiet boy in the bed next door who cries loudly in the middle of the night, the boy who smiles like the sun bursting through the dark clouds of a storm. Hopefully, Keiji will remember him too.

Then it’s goodbye, for real this time.

He picks up some of the things to carry himself, and his parents follow him to the elevator. He’s already said goodbye to the nurses, so he keeps his head down to make sure that Keiji remains as his last goodbye. The doors of the elevator open, and ahead of him through a set of sliding doors the sun shines down to the floor. He rushes ahead to jump on the warm patch of sunlight.

Koutarou walks out, his backpack over his shoulder, his quilt hugged tight to his chest. The wind is blowing through his hair, and he steps out from between his parents to feel more of it’s cool embrace. Now that he is out from behind the glass, the walls, he can see and feel the heat of the sun; but there is nothing that can match the breath of air on his skin quite like this. The real thing. The same breeze that moves through the trees tussles his hair in a sweet caress. He misses the hospital, he misses Keiji already; but he loves this.


	2. Chapter 2

“Your parents are away again aren’t they? Would you like to come in and stay for a while?”

It’s been a long time. A good few years. Not since he moved out of his home and into the dorms. It’s nicer a the dorms, it’s easier to live. It’s so much closer to what he remembers loving as a kid. It’s everything that he loved about staying in paired with everything that he missed while he was there. The wind in his hair, the burn of the sun, being able to run around with everyone else until he’s ready to collapse. There’s something missing, though, and Koutarou doesn’t even know if missing is the right word. He’s lacking something, something that he can’t quite put his finger on. Something that makes his food taste bland, makes volleyball not fun, makes his friends too much to deal with.

“Yes.”

His doctor smiles. It’s a nice smile, Koutarou likes it. Years and years spent coming in to talk to him every month has let Koutarou judge each smile for himself. They might not mean what Koutarou associates them with, but for him, it works. Plus, he thinks he’s gotten pretty good at reading stoic faces after pestering Akaashi into playing with him for the past few months.

“Okay then. I’ll look around for a bed for you, and have someone call you tonight to let you know where to come.”

“I’m not just staying now?”

“I’ll need to find you a bed. And your family won’t be visiting?” He drags the question off, and Koutarou thinks that he should probably call his parents to say that he’s going to be staying at the hospital for a while. This won’t make them come home. If Koutarou had said that he was having trouble elsewhere they might have come home for him. Going into the hospital, though, they know he likes that. They probably trust him more to the hospitals care than to the care of their dorm head. Koutarou shakes his head, and his doctor continues. “So ideally I will try and find a space near where I work in the day so I can check up on you regularly. How does that sound?”

“It sounds good?” He’s not sure if it is meant to sound any other way.

“That’s good then. So you get home and pack what you need, let people know that you aren’t going to be around for a little while, and I will see you again tomorrow!”

Tomorrow, that’s better than Koutarou was expecting after being sent home today. Not going in today had him thinking that he wasn’t going to get in soon at all. Tomorrow, tomorrow is fine. Tomorrow means that like he’s been told, he can pack, he can tell the coach, maybe not the team; he can tell the people at the dorm so that he doesn’t get written up for missing curfew.

“I’ll see you tomorrow!” He calls to his doctor. Koutarou rushes from the room, runs all the way to the bus stop, where he pauses for breath before deciding that he doesn’t want to sit still. He runs all the way back to school, where he collapses until the call comes and he packs his bags. He doesn’t know how long he’ll be away for.

 

 

He’s up so high, he doesn’t know why he’s brought up here, why it is here he will be staying. This is higher than where he used to stay, as a child, when he was so much younger - it’s only a few years but it feels like a lifetime ago. It’s so much higher as well than where he comes to meet his doctor. Once a month, the first Tuesday of every month, to talk.

Koutarou follows the signs to reception, to the nurses station, follows the signs for as far as he has been directed. He casts his eyes around the ward as he goes, and just from this, he can tell that the atmosphere is so much different to what he remembers of being a child. A child, but it was only a few years ago. Years change so much. He’s not placed down on the ward where his older friends were, where he was. Instead, he's in an adult ward, a long term ward, a recovery ward.

That’s fine, that’s what he’s here to do as well.

He stops at the nurses station, which is unoccupied, and drops his bag to the floor. It’s early in the afternoon, soon after lunch would have been served and possibly just after it’s been cleared away. Koutarou hasn’t eaten lunch yet, he also hasn’t had breakfast or food to at all over the last few days, barely anything over the last few weeks. It doesn’t matter that he hasn’t eaten today. It doesn’t matter that he’s missed lunch. Nothing matters.

“Hi! How can I help you?” The voice is cheery, light. It pulls Koutarou from his thoughts, it soothes.

“I was told to come up and there would be a bed for me?” He ends it with a question, not sure. He’s been told to come here but this is so different to all of the other times he’s been here that he’s not actually sure if this is what he’s meant to do. The last time he was in hospital his parents had dropped him off. This time, it’s just him, growing up too soon and too fast in a way that he doesn’t want to.

“Oh! Bokuto right? Yes, yes, we were told there was a scheduled person coming in today. It was a nice surprise for all of us because usually we don’t get told that someone’s coming.” No, of course not. Usually, it’s sick people, sick people who show signs of being sick, and Koutarou is just Koutarou, nothing to show for it, but his doctor said that he should come in. That means something. That means he’s sick too. “Follow me and I’ll show you to where you’ll be staying!”

Koutarou picks his bag back up from the ground but doesn’t swing it over his shoulder. He carries it in his hand, by the handles, it almost drags on the ground as he follows in the nurses footsteps.

The room he’s led to is bigger than the ones he’s stayed in before, there are more people in it too. Two people are lying on their beds, and one person sits next to an empty bed, Koutarou can’t tell if the bed is theirs or if they are simply a visitor. One thing is for sure, Koutarou doesn’t fit in with this room.

The hospital as a child was not having to care at all, having other people there to care about everything for him: if he was eating, how he was feeling, was he having fun, has he taken his pills? The hospital as a child was making friends, it was hiding under covers to watch things after curfew, it was stealing into other people's rooms. It was teasing the older ones for girlfriends and boyfriends and it was making himself scarce when parents came to visit.

Here, there are no parents to visit. Koutarou can’t imagine that these people still have parents. And that thought there, has him thinking that the person in the chair is a visitor, the only one in the room with colour to their hair. The other two are aged, grey; they don’t look up as the nurse enters with Koutarou behind her, but the one in the chair does. Looks and looks surprised. Because why would Koutarou be here? He doesn’t fit in.

“Here is your bed, I’ll write your name up here for you.” Koutarou watches as the nurse does just that, his family name, nothing intimate. Not Koutarou like he would be given downstairs. “There’s a recreation room further down the hall if you keep following the way we came. There’s a television in there if you want it, tea and coffee. The bathroom is just in the corner of the room here by the window.” Koutarou follows her hands as she points out the direction of everything. On the whole, things are not that different, apart from the fact that they are. “I’ll leave you to get settled in and the doctor will come down when he’s ready to talk to you!”

This is the first time where Koutarou feels something lift in his chest since he got here. The doctor, coming to talk to him. This he is okay with, this he is familiar with. Everything else is so different to what he had been expecting that it’s nice for something finally to match up with his expectations.

Koutarou drops his bag down on the armchair next to his bed, the first thing he unpacks is his quilt. Already the room feels brighter, even though Koutarou is going to have to accept that this time he is not next to the window. Instead of the window, he is right next to the large entrance of the room. He sits down at the head of the bed and from here he can see the corner of the nurses station. The direction anyone will come from if they come to visit him.

He doesn’t want anyone to visit. He doesn’t want anyone to see that his mood swings are more than mood swings. He doesn’t want anyone to see that their captain really is as everyone says he is in the corridors of the school. He doesn’t want anyone to see what he tries so hard to hide when he’s on the court. He doesn’t want anyone to see how useless he is.

Koutarou doesn’t know when all these thoughts started to flood his mind. It’s only a recent thing. For years and years, he’s brushed off the comments of not being good enough, of only being loud and energetic until something goes wrong. He’s long learned to live with the fact that most people will only appreciate him with a ball in his hand and his team scattered around him.

His team, he wants his team to see him like this least of all. His team, they are the only ones who trust in him to come back, to pick his head up, to shake it off, to get back to what draws them all together in the first place. The game, dedication, love, passion. Camaraderie. He wonders how much the team will notice his absence. At practice, it goes without saying that he will be missed. He wonders if they will miss him around the dorm if they will miss the Koutarou that isn’t captain, isn’t powerful, isn’t someone with outstanding abilities but only in this small niche thing that most people don’t care for.

Koutarou is sure, after all of these years; sure, convinced, certain, that his doctor is psychic.

He moves to the room and Koutarou sees him rounding the corner, and just the sight of him pauses the whirlwind of his mind. He draws the curtains closed, he shifts Koutarou’s bag to the bed and settles into the armchair.

“It’s nice having you up here, these chairs are so much more comfortable than downstairs I don’t know how everyone’s parents can just sit in them all day.”

A box of band-aids is placed on the bed.

 

 

It’s strange how quickly Koutarou goes from feeling out of place to feeling like this was always meant to happen. He doesn’t make friends, he doesn’t actually talk to any of the people in his room, but he feels at home here once more. In a new bed, in a new room, on a new floor, but with his clothes finally tucked away into drawers and his quilt spread over the end of his bed. A splash of colour in an otherwise bland room. His new home, for however long he stays here.

In only a day he has a new routine built up.

In two days visitors of the other people start to talk to him, they have a lot of visitors. It’s his fate, to always share rooms with people who have a lot of visitors, but he doesn’t mind. Other people having visitors doesn’t make him feel lonely, as one of the nurses ask. He doesn’t want visitors. He is here to get away from the people he knows. To relax. To not need to be Bokuto Koutarou, ace and captain of Fukurodani’s nationally ranked volleyball team.

Here he is just him.

And finally, he gets a bag, a line, hooked right into his arm.

He’s always wanted this, some kind of proof of being sick.

All it is, he is told, is dehydration. He’s simply being plied with nutrients because he keeps forgetting to eat, he doesn’t want to eat. The thought of eating makes him feel queasy, and even food he knows he likes, the dessert, right next to the meal, is unappetising. He’s plugged into the wall because of his own sickness, not because of something else. Koutarou feels validated. Years and years of seeing the doctor, and hospital visits but he always seemed to be the only one who never had this. Now he does, now it feels real.

 

 

“Bokuto-san.”

“Akaashi! How are you? How is the team? Do you miss me yet?!”

Koutarou shoots apologetic looks into every room he passes as he moves from his room to the recreation room. He’s pushed and pulled at the drips on other people before, but the motion feels so different when it’s attached to himself. It catches on corners, it has a mind of its own, it takes a good chunk of Koutarou’s concentration to focus on keeping it in line with him. So that it doesn’t pull, so that it doesn’t hurt. He doesn't know why he never thought about it hurting.

“Where are you?”

“Akaashi! I asked you questions first!”

“Where are you?”

Koutarou sighs, long and loud into the speaker of his phone now that he’s made it to an area of the ward where he’s allowed to be noisy. It's allowed but it doesn't mean it's appreciated. Koutarou is looked over long and hard by many pairs of eyes, but he’s used to that now anyway. He’s the youngest on the ward, by a good few decades, and not even the colour of his hair helps him to blend in. Not when his veins still flood with energy and everyone else in his room needs help just to move from their beds to their chairs.

Now he knows why they’re so comfy. Now he knows why his doctor had him placed up here. He thinks he knows anyway; he’s pretty sure.

“What have you been told?”

Koutarou only told the coach, his homeroom teacher, and the head of the dorm where he was going. He told them all, that they were the only ones he was telling. He told them all, that he didn’t want other people to know. It’s a bit early for it, but Koutarou gave them the idea of saying that he had gone to be with his parents for the new year. It’s a good few weeks early, though, so Koutarou doesn’t actually know the story. If they managed to come up with something better.

“They said your parents wanted you to visit for the new year.”

“Yep!” At least he knows for sure now what it is the others know, what they think. He knows now what to say if anyone else thinks of contacting him. They won’t, it's really an Akaashi thing to do.

“You’re not, though.”

“What! Why would I lie? Where else would I be?”

Akaashi is silent on the other end of the phone. Thinking, Koutarou knows. He also knows this is a dangerous thing for Akaashi to be doing. Akaashi is smart, he will figure it out. Koutarou doesn’t think he’s left any clues behind, but he trusts in Akaashi head, trusts in Akaashi’s everything. He's learned to over the last few months, particularly over the last few weeks. He knows that Akaashi is going to figure it out.

The noises coming over the line from Akaashi’s side quiet, all he can hear is Akaashi’s breathing and Koutarou knows that he is walking, moving, to somewhere that is more private. A hard thing to do when they live with most of the people they know.

“Bokuto-san,” Koutarou knows that Akaashi wants answers, can read it in the silence that follows the words. Absolute silence, Akaashi has found somewhere to talk. When he gets back to school Koutarou will have to ask where it is, because this sounds like a place he should know about, it sounds like somewhere to go to get away from people and responsibilities and being himself.

He hums into the phone, to let Akaashi know that he is listening. He smiles to himself with the knowledge that while Akaashi has found somewhere quiet and private to talk Koutarou is here in a room full of people for this conversation. This is also the only place he can be.

“Please tell me where you are. If you want it to be a secret then I won’t tell anyone, but I thought I meant more than having to be told by someone else that you had gone. You didn’t even tell me yourself.”

He didn’t tell Akaashi, he didn’t tell anyone. He didn’t want to.

“If it makes you feel better I didn’t tell anyone else either!” He knows how this will be received. As soon as the words leave his mouth he knows. His chest sinks, he sinks. He sinks on the floor in the corner of the room and ignores the eyes that turn to watch him fall. He ignores specifically, a pair of rolled eyes that say even without context, they can tell that what he said was wrong.

“That doesn’t make me feel better at all Bokuto-san. I thought we were friends.”

“We are friends!” It doesn’t matter that he raises his voice to say so. A gut reaction to something that he's never thought of much before now. Captain, vice-captain, part of the same team. It doesn't automatically mean friendship, but he's happy to hear the words. 

Already Koutarou thinks that the room finds him more entertaining than the drama they are all watching on the screen.

“Friends don’t lie to each other Bokuto-san--”

“It wasn’t a lie, I just didn’t say anything.”

“--unless they have a good reason to.” Akaashi pauses, catching up with Koutarou words. “You did lie, you just told me that you were with your parents. But you’re not, are you.”

It’s not a question, Akaashi knows. Sometimes Koutarou thinks Akaashi knows him better than he knows himself. He doesn’t know when or how it happened, but it’s definitely a feeling he gets. It's usually on the court, it's usually not like this.

“I’m not.” He’s already on the floor, he wishes he could sink through the carpet as well.

“You’re at the hospital aren’t you?”

Koutarou doesn’t want to know how Akaashi knows this. It’s magic. “Yes.” He sighs into the phone. “How did you know?” If it were anywhere else, for anything else, he would be excited for Akaashi guessing correctly the first time. Here, for this, Koutarou wishes just once that Akaashi wasn’t so smart, so intuitive, so filled with knowledge on him. He wonders if Akaashi has been able to tell that he had this coming, he hopes not. He hopes nobody could see his slow descent. He hopes it was all just himself, all in his head where it’s meant to stay. He hopes that none of it spilt over into life.

“I’ve been to a hospital before Bokuto-san, I can hear it through the phone.”

“Hear it?” Koutarou looks around, his own drip whirs and beeps, as do several more in the room. “Oh, this?” He holds his phone up to his own machine. Holds it there for a moment, holds it out and watches as it drips down into the line, as it flows to his arm. He can’t actually feel it, but watching it go in makes him think he can. He pulls the phone back to his ear. “It’s the first time I’ve ever had a drip in!”

He hears Akaashi sigh, one that sounds like he almost wants to laugh. Almost, not quite, Koutarou needs to do better. Akaashi has a beautiful laugh when he lets himself. “That’s a strange thing to be excited about.”

Strange. It is strange. Koutarou doesn’t necessarily mind.

“It means I’m sick.”

“You’re in a hospital Bokuto-san, that usually means you’re sick.”

“I could be injured.”

“But you’re not.”

“I’m not injured!”

“See Bokuto-san, it makes sense to be excited about that. Having a drip isn’t exciting.”

“You wouldn’t understand Akaashi, you’ve never had one.”

“I have.”

 

 

“Help me!”

Koutarou can’t sleep, but the call has him opening his eyes.

“Help me!” The call comes again. His curtains are closed, but the tone of the voice, the direction it comes from, tells Koutarou that it’s coming from the man in the bed across from him.

“Help me!” It comes again.

Does Koutarou help? Can he help? What does he need help with?

He slips out of bed, silent, the calls are loud, but Koutarou can’t hear any of the others awake. They might be deep sleepers, they might be hard of hearing, Koutarou doesn’t know; he might be the only one who can hear the calls for help, he might be the only one who can do something.

He eyes the button at the head of his bed, does he call the nurse or does he see what’s wrong first?

He pulls his curtains open, cringing as the rungs scrape against the rail they hang from.

With the curtains drawn, even just enough for a small space to open up. The noise of the ward filters through. The steady beep of machinery, nurses trailing up and down. Doors opening, closing. Hushed conversations. It’s all loud, all noisy, Koutarou worries less about the tiny amount that he is adding to the noise of the night. It’s unnecessary, it’s probably going unheard.

“Help me!” That, however, does not go unheard by him. It does, however, go unheard by the nurse who passes by the opening to their room at what seems to be the exact same time.

Is he hearing things? Is he dreaming? Is this not real?

“Help me!”

It sounds real. Koutarou feels awake. He feels dread pool at the raspiness of the voice, at the desperateness of the sound. It doesn’t feel like something in his head, like something he is projecting onto the world.

“Takumi is that you?” Koutarou kneels on the end of his bed, pulls his curtains open wider because that voice is from another bed. The bed next to the calls of help me. “Takumi?” A woman’s voice.

“Help me!”

“Takumi I can’t get out of bed, I can’t help you.”

“Help me!”

Koutarou does, he scrambles to the other end of his bed, ignoring the pain in his arm with the abrupt movement, with the new weight pressed on it. It’s nothing. The man needs help, and Koutarou presses down on the button at the head of his bed.

He waits, through more calls for help, through the woman becoming agitated too because she can’t get out of bed, she can’t help. Koutarou wonders if the final occupant of their room is also listening, or if they are sleeping through Koutarou’s horror of not being able to do anything. Of not knowing what to do.

“Bokuto-kun, what’s wrong?” A nurse comes in, finally.

And Koutarou doesn’t even have to talk because across the room the call comes again. “Help me!”

“I can’t get out of bed!”

Two voices, two beds. One scratchy, hoarse; the other pitched high, almost hysterical.

Koutarou feels like his own eyes widen, terror. He doesn’t know what is happening on the other side of the room but he is terrified of it.

The nurse follows his eyes, brushes a soothing hand through his hair. It helps, but it’s helping him and not them.

“Help me!” And then a scream.

“Did you call for them?”

Koutarou nods, he can’t speak. Across the room are shouts and screams but his own terror holds him in silence. He doesn’t even think he can move right now. He just sits on the bed, knees curled to his chest and his curtains pulled open at the end of the bed. He watches the nurse move across the room, she opens the curtains and Koutarou can hear her voice but not her words. They are few, the conversation short. She moves back out from the curtains and over to the next bed. The same happens again.

The nurse comes back over to Koutarou’s bed, via the bed next to his which has remained silent this whole time. She places a hand in his hair and Koutarou registers a pattern. A hand in his hair earlier, in the night, earlier in the day, over the last few days. This is something that is written down, it has to be. He hasn’t seen the nurses touching other people, but with him, their tactile soothing is welcome, more than welcome. It’s something he needs. It soothes, it eases his mind into something that relaxes.

He still doesn’t sleep. Not quite. But he does to shut off the world around him until he hears the tray settle down at his bedside.

It doesn’t mean that it is time to eat, it simply means that now is an acceptable time to be awake.

 

 

At lunch time, he eats dessert. And the wild-haired visitor - for someone Koutarou knows is named Nekomata but in his head, only the words _help me_ resound - drops off a copy of volleyball monthly for him to read.

When Koutarou first saw him show up he didn’t know what to think of it, didn’t know how to feel about someone outside of his friends and the people he knew, but still knowing him, knowing that he is in here. They’ve never talked, not properly. Still, Koutarou remembers the game only a little while ago spent trash talking across the net. It had been fun, and Koutarou had almost been upset to send this person off home while they continued to play, all the way to nationals.

Help Me is asleep, and the guy sits down at Koutarou’s bedside instead. He didn’t think he would be making friends, not on this ward, not sharing a room with these people. And they aren’t even friends, but still. Koutarou feels a peace he hasn’t felt in so long sitting here with someone who is seeing him for his part in two worlds.

Bokuto Koutarou: newly appointed captain of a nationally ranked volleyball team.

Bokuto Koutarou: currently living in the stroke ward of the hospital.

He hasn’t asked why Koutarou is here, he doesn’t say anything about being here. Instead, whenever he talks he talks about volleyball, about his own school, about his own struggles as captain, and Koutarou responds in kind. Two worlds colliding, two worlds that were never meant to meet.

Not until Akaashi called him up the other day at least, Koutarou is sure that two worlds will be meeting again soon. He’s not sure how he feels about that. There’s something simple in sharing it all with this stranger but for a volleyball game, it’s different sharing it with someone who is his vice-captain, his junior. Someone who Koutarou doesn’t want to appear weak in front of.

His phone is off, it sits in the drawer of his bedside and has been off ever since the phone call the other day. Akaashi said he would visit, Koutarou doesn’t know when. It'll be a surprise.

It’s already dark outside, practice is probably over, it could be anytime.

It could be never.

He doesn’t like waiting for things he doesn’t know.

Koutarou turns the page of the magazine in his hands, ignores the sputters of the guy in the chair next to him, and turns the page again.

“I only just bought this today! Stop turning the pages when I haven’t finished reading yet!”

“I’m not really in the mood for reading, I’m bored of sitting down.”

“Can you walk?”

Koutarou’s immediate response is to shout back. He doesn’t. He knows better than to do that here. Besides, the guy has never asked, never questioned Koutarou’s presence here. For all he knows Koutarou is here because he had a stroke. At the ripe old age of seventeen and rooming with people in a similar situation. He doesn’t know the truth, only knows that Koutarou is in this room with these people and he’s connecting the dots.

“I can walk.” Is all he says instead. He doesn’t need to know the truth.

And this, this is what Koutarou remembers of being a child, of having fun while living here. This time, he’s older, and he still remembers where not to go because nothing can push the sight of that from his mind, but exploring is still the same as ever.

He’s staying on a higher floor this time, and out the window it means the city lies beneath him, but in the building, it means there is more going on.

It’s not just one entire floor dedicated to children, divided up along the corridor by their ages. They walk past room after room after room of elderly patients like those in Koutarou’s room. Some with varying degrees of mobility Koutarou notes. Some of the people they pass are learning to walk again, learning how to walk further than across the room. They roam the halls, assistant in hand; and it makes Koutarou feel like he fits in. He has his own assistant in hand, seeing as he doesn’t fully believe that Koutarou actually can walk on his own.

Koutarou doesn’t mind, he likes it in fact. The touch is nice, reassuring.

They pass wide open doors, the elevators; but instead of boarding them they continue walking. There’s still a whole other side to this floor. After that, they can move on further, up or down, or maybe even outside for a few moments. Koutarou would like that. It’s been a few days since he last felt fresh air on his skin and it’s always the one thing he misses the most for his time spent here.

The new ward only consists only of two waiting rooms and a lot of offices. Koutarou spies his doctor’s name and then turns them away down a different corridor. What if they saw each other? What if he said hi? What if his new friend managed to figure out what was wrong with him? Why he’s really here?

They find stairs and climb down. The guy holds on to Koutarou’s drip and carries it.

A new floor and an entirely new space; and Koutarou thinks about where he really wants to go.

He’s never been on this floor, though, not on these floors. It’s higher than where he’s used to, and all those other times he had only travelled down. It’s the direction they travel this time. Another time, he should try moving up. He wonders if there’s a rooftop here. If even while living here, he can just move up and up and up and have the wind in his hair and the sun on skin and feel everything all at once.

Not yet, not this time, they move down three floors to where Koutarou wants to go.

It’s the same as he remembers it. There are new people, both nurses and patients alike, and new art on the walls. It’s smaller, his few steps taking him so much further along the corridor. But there’s the classroom he spent so much time in, the recreation room filled with actual computers and game consoles, so much better than the strange ones he had needed to play on although they line the wall like relics. He walks down the corridor, peeking into rooms and watching the ages of those residing inside of them drop. All the way down to where he’s peeking through a locked door and half a window. Empty.

He moves on, he moves back up.

 

 

“Akaashi! What are you doing here?” Akaashi sits in the armchair, sinking into it. He’s almost lost among the plushness of it, and Koutarou never realised that Akaashi was so small. A year younger than himself, still so much time to grow. He might be taller than Koutarou yet.

“I came to visit, I thought you might like it.”

“I do, I do! I just didn’t expect you here. Isn’t there practice on?”

“It finished early,” Akaashi says, it’s all he says.

Koutarou sits cross-legged in the centre of his bed, facing Akaashi who seems to just sink further into the armchair. He looks tense, uncomfortable. He looks like someone who only believes the stories of hospitals being scary places and not places where their entire job is to make things better, to make people better.

“So you came to see me?” Koutarou would usually cheer the words, but he can’t when the two other people in the room seem to almost be asleep, maybe already there. “You missed tossing for me, right? Right!”

“I certainly didn’t miss your noise.”

Koutarou laughs, to him, the words mean the opposite, they mean that Akaashi has missed him. He doesn’t address this. “So what did you miss then?”

“Do you know how long you’re staying for?”

Koutarou feels the way his face falls at the change in topic. It would have been nice, to hear why he’s missed, especially from Akaashi. Akaashi is who he spends the most time with, the one who is most likely to grow tired of him, to grow sick of dealing with him and the slow swing of his mind. But Akaashi came to him, came to visit. Missed him enough to see him beyond the bounds of just being a team member.

Koutarou would like him to say why. Would like to know, why it is that Akaashi is here. What it is that brought him to visit the captain that has barely been captain and left, throwing it all onto this first year's shoulders. A burden that he had failed to carry thrown down to someone who hasn't even been on the team a year. It wouldn't be misplaced for Akaashi to hate him. But he doesn't, he's here.

 

 

Koutarou spends all of his afternoons with his new friend. He and Kuroo pour through magazines and he finds out that the guy across the room is Kuroo's coach, that his team has someone else to coach them for the moment. Koutarou is amazed by the display of care. Kuroo is a new captain, just like him. But instead of running away, of hiding away, Kuroo leads his team and still finds time to see how their coach is doing nearly every day. Koutarou can't picture himself doing the same for his team, and already he doesn't want his team to do the same for him.

Kuroo is so different, he seems so much more mature and in control. At least, Koutarou has these thoughts about him until he opens his mouth to make suggestions on what to do.

He comes to visit his coach, but in the meantime, for the moments when his coach is relearning how to move, is stuck in therapy which Koutarou hears from across the room is painful. Not so much physically as it is tedious for someone once so in control of themselves that they made it their life's work to teach other people how to move.

Kuroo says that he's a good coach, and Koutarou can't disagree when he sees how much Kuroo cares for someone who he isn't even related to.

And Kuroo is fun, is truthful and honest, and full of apology when this comes to be too much to handle. Koutarou loves it. Loves this life that breezes through the room. Kuroo brings in the wind and the sun and keeps Koutarou from just dreaming about it from the wrong side of the window. He loves it when Kuroo takes him to it.

They don't take the elevator, both of them wanting to but caught up in the fear of getting caught. There aren't signs, not that they've seen anyway. It goes unspoken. The roof is not somewhere that is open to the public. It goes unspoken. The roof is somewhere they both want to go. They're the same age - close enough, Kuroo will say, but Koutarou likes that he can claim to be older - and active boys and they want the adventure of the open air on top of this building where they can look down on the city from Koutarou's window. But Koutarou is only eight floors up and there are still more to go.

It's more than he expected. It's almost too much. Creeping up the final staircase.

"Oi, Bokuto wait." He pauses, hand resting on the door. Ready to press it open and see if the wind is blowing here, to feel it.

"What?"

Kuroo waves his arm around before he answers. Pointing out a green sign and words that have everything in Koutarou's body sinking. "It says opening the door will set off the fire alarm."

"Lots of doors say that it doesn't mean it's true." He says this, but he's only actually encountered it once before. At school, by the emergency exit to the gym which he used once accidentally and then all the time once he figured out that it saved him from running around some of the other buildings when he was pushing practice a bit too close to curfew.

"Okay, open it then."

"No!" It's one thing for Kuroo to warn him, to be scared. But if this warning is, in fact, real and not just for scaring off lazy high schoolers then Koutarou doesn't want to bear the brunt of the hospital's fire alarm going off. "You open it!"

"I already said not to, I'm not going to."

"Then we won't go outside." Koutarou wants to go outside. He has his hand still resting on the door. If Kuroo hadn't interrupted his motions they could have already been outside under the cool winter sky. If Kuroo hadn't interrupted his motions they wouldn't be caught here in a stalemate. Too scared to open the door, too enamoured by the promise of a rooftop to turn back.

Koutarou can't back down, not here, not in front of Kuroo. He doesn't know Kuroo that well, he's a friend here but they met as opponents, they'll meet again as opponents. Koutarou can't let Kuroo hold this over him, he can't let this be seen as a weakness. Already, his hand is ready to push the door open. All that's left is to put his weight behind it.

"You're such a scaredy cat." Koutarou has to get the last word in before opening the door. That way, no matter what the outcome, he wins. If their escape to the rooftop is silent he wins. If their escape to the rooftop is met with roaring alarms then at least he was brave enough to do it.

Roaring silence.

Well, the roar isn't from the alarm. It's from being up high. Fifteen floors and the wind whipping around protrusions on the rooftop. Fan belts, a fire escape, boxes and boards that Koutarou can't attribute a use to at all. Maybe there is equipment buried in them, hanging down into the rooms below.

And it's so, so cold. He doesn't have a jacket on, he isn't even wearing something with sleeves that cover his arms. They're bare, and his hair stands on end, and goosebumps riddle his skin. The air bites at his face and pulls his hair, but it is nice to feel. To not have the programmed warmth, to experience something that doesn't fall between eighteen and twenty degrees in the middle of winter. To find something natural. The sun is fighting its way through the clouds, but the city is left to bathe in grey. Koutarou doesn't think it's ever looked so beautiful. Darkness, even though it's early in the afternoon. The true coming of winter.

They don't stay long.

Another afternoon they go down to where Koutarou feels like he spent half his childhood. Not in a bad way, he has to say when Kuroo looks at him with pity in his eyes, he still remembers them being some of the best times of his young life. Saying this doesn't stop Kuroo from pitying him. The look only starts to fade when they sit next to each other in the recreation room.

"I can maybe see how this is fun now."

Koutarou can feel his tongue between his lips as he focuses on the screen in front of him. Playing through the level he never could quite get through in his younger years. He struggles through it now, but he also hopes that with his extra years of experience it'll be easier now. He somewhat remembers the levels he battled through before. It's more difficult when he gets to a level he hasn't seen before. Experience with other games don't help when it comes to this one that he's sure only exists on this strange console. An ancient relic surrounded by all the new ones and real ones spread around the room.

"Yeah, add in the part where going to school is optional here and the afternoons are always art."

"Do you have to do schoolwork now?"

"Nope!" Koutarou swings the controller around in front of his face, dodging the rocks that fall down around him and also avoiding where Kuroo's arms flail around at his own game. A different one to the one Koutarou is playing. Still on an ancient machine.

"What about exams?" Tetsurou mashes down on buttons, but Koutarou's controller freezes within his hands, settling down into his lap. He doesn't feel anything as he watches his character flatten beneath a rock. "We have our exams next week and it's totally killing me!"

"I don't know." He hasn't thought about exams at all. His teachers are letting him off from studying, but he has no idea how all of this time away is going to affect his exams. Koutarou assumes that he will still have to take them at some point, but he hasn't been going to school for a couple of weeks. He's been skipping class and not focusing on whatever has been happening in class for longer than that. If he has to sit an exam before starting the next trimester he's going to fail. There's no question of the issue. He _will_ fail.

The tone of his voice must give away the direction of his thoughts because Kuroo abruptly changes topics and Koutarou picks up his controller, running through the falling rocks once more. This time, he escapes them.

The next day they sit in the cafe all afternoon. Kuroo starts out studying but very quickly they devolve to gossiping about the people that walk through the doors. Guessing at what exact jobs the people in scrubs have as they collect caffeine to finish off their day. Making up stories for all the people that stop by and sit down at the tables. What kind of person they're visiting, if maybe this place just has the best hot chocolates for their commute home. Koutarou certainly thinks it's some of the best he's had. But his usual hot chocolate is also from the instant machine in the dorm kitchen or sometimes when he's feeling the urge to spend money he gets it from the vending machine.

The gift shop, on another day, is something Koutarou never really thought to explore in any of his previous expeditions. It is something he will never forgive himself for. The gift shop is exciting now, as a child it might as well have been a magic shop for all of the knick knacks that line its shelves.

Beauty products the likes of which Koutarou could never think of buying. Although he really should consider touching up his hair while he's here. It's growing out again. Maybe he could ask Kuroo to help him with it? Or Akaashi? There are actual gifts, teddy bears and balloons, chocolates and flowers, candles and scented lotions, walls and walls of greeting cards, most of them not even get well cards. Koutarou might actually visit next time he needs to get a birthday present for someone. He even spies toy cars and dress-up dolls, origami sets and do-it-yourself science experiments. Kuroo hangs around one of the latter, and Koutarou makes a note of it in case they're still friends a year from now.

 

 

There's a pattern to this that makes Koutarou think Akaashi's visits are not as simple as practice ending early. Koutarou doesn't question Akaashi's excuses, not when he likes the company, and not when Akaashi's visits are one of the few things that ground him in the passing of time.

To avoid Akaashi catching on to the fact that Koutarou has figured out that the visits aren't just born of convenience, he isn't always in his room at the exact time that Akaashi appears. Because it is always the same time. Seven on Friday nights. Four on the weekend. Koutarou isn't always absent, he doesn't want Akaashi not to come. Neither is he always there because Koutarou feels like if he waits, purposely waits, then it'll hurt so much more on the day Akaashi invariably decides not to show. He doesn't want to hold too much hope in his visits. Not when one day, Akaashi will surely discover better things to do with his time.

For now, Koutarou simply enjoys Akaashi's presence.

He likes it when they sit, heads buried together to watch videos on Akaashi's phone. Grumbling sometimes when he picks up that it's an educational video because Koutarou has already rebuffed all of Akaashi's attempts to pick up classwork for him. Most of the time they are animal videos and Koutarou will coo at the cuteness and laugh at how innocent animals are - knocking into Akaashi's head and needing to pull away. Sometimes they are volleyball videos, Akaashi switching it up between videos of pro teams and their own team practicing. Koutarou doesn't want to know how his team plays without him.

One of Koutarou's favourite things is coming back to the room to find Akaashi settled into the armchair, notebooks surrounding him.

He likes this. He likes coming back from whatever mischief he and Kuroo have conjured to sit down and not have to worry about pleasing anyone. Akaashi studies, and sometimes will stare down at him in a way that Koutarou thinks is meant to convey that he should be doing the same thing. But Koutarou just lies back on his bed, raised so that it is just shy of sitting straight, and listens to music. Watching the window until the sky darkens and the curtains close.

It's nice. It's something that Koutarou didn't know could be nice. When he's with people he thinks he always has to be doing something, saying something. But here he is, doing nothing, saying nothing, not even paying attention to Akaashi who has travelled all the way here, and it's become one of his favourite things. Doing nothing, while Akaashi sits next to him ignoring him just the same. He doesn't feel the need to do anything, to change any part of this interaction.

 

 

Tonight, for whatever reason, Akaashi is drowning is school work. Koutarou watches him work through it, casting glances while he stares through the window, and then all of his attention once it's covered. He hopes it isn't the team that is making him fall behind. He shouldn't have this much at the end of the weekend. Koutarou knows that exams are coming up, right before the break. And the team has practice, but no games. But it would be just like Akaashi to work hard for the team just to keep them all in line. Just to show that despite his age, he is the captain for now. While Koutarou does nothing but lie around here.

“You should take a break.”

"Exams start tomorrow Bokuto-san."

"I bet you already studied for your ones tomorrow. I bet you're going over something you have the exam for on Thursday." Akaashi gets a little line right over the bridge of his nose. It's cute. It also means that Koutarou is on the right track. "You shouldn't burn yourself out. It won't help if you have too much in your head that you can't think properly tomorrow."

Akaashi purses his lips, searching for words to say, but Koutarou knows that he's trapped.

"We should watch a movie!"

Akaashi searches the room, the space that's theirs between the closed curtains that surround the bed. "How are we going to watch a movie? I don't think watching something on my phone is going to work for a whole movie. It'll be bad for our necks and I don't think the battery will last."

"Akaashi!" Akaashi is quick to move from the armchair. He scatters papers around him and all over the floor but it's apparently a secondary concern to clasping his hand over Koutarou's mouth.

"Shh."

"You underestimate me so much!" To prove even more about this being the case, Koutarou drags Akaashi onto the bed. It's an easy feat considering how far Akaashi is already leaning over. Koutarou keeps one hand on Akaashi, keeping him in the bed, as he bends himself over the side of the bed to rustle through his drawers. "It's kind of old, and I only have one movie, but I'm prepared!"

"What movie is it?"

"It's my favourite."

Akaashi smiles then, so soft and small it almost doesn't register. It makes Koutarou happy. That just hearing that it's his favourite movie has Akaashi excited to watch it, that he resigns himself to doing so instead of studying.

Koutarou pulls himself back up to the bed with the grip he has on Akaashi. He places the clunky old portable player on his lap and searches through the few files on it to the movie he's watched at least ten times over the past couple of weeks. It doesn't get old. It still makes him happy. It soothes and calms and slows him down. In a nice way. A good way. 

He has to push up close to Akaashi in order for them both to fit on the bed. The hospital bed is smaller than his one at the dorm, and he's never really noticed until now. Their elbows bump, so Koutarou links their arms, erasing the awkward position but not necessarily the awkwardness, settling his weight into Akaashi in a way that is closer than they have ever been. Akaashi stiffens at the new position, and it isn't until they are a decent way into the movie that Koutarou finally feels him relax against him too. His head settling onto Koutarou's shoulder, his weight sinking into the bed.

It's a physical comfort he hasn't had for years, for way too long. He likes it. He hopes that with Akaashi's consecutive visits, with all this voluntary time spent together, that it means something more. He hasn't been on the lookout for someone to call his best friend, but in this moment, Koutarou feels like he has two people he's happy to use the words on. This stay in the hospital has been good for him in ways not even his doctor could have predicted.

"I'm off, see you tomorrow!" Akaashi jumps as the curtains part to reveal Kuroo's shaggy hair. 

Koutarou laughs at his surprise and waves with the hand that isn't linked with Akaashi's. "See you!"

This time, Akaashi takes a lot less time to settle back into him.

 

 

Koutarou feels it when his bed is suddenly flooded with cold air. The covers fold back over him but the warmth doesn't quite return to what it once was.

"Hello?" Koutarou recognises the voice. He recognises that there's something off about it but in the same vein recognises that he is not the one being spoken to.

He shivers in the bed, shifts and moves to a spot that feels warmer. Koutarou burrows himself in the covers, pulling his head down beneath the blanket and consoling himself in the new warmth it brings.

"I'm sorry, I'll see you in the morning."

\--meaning it's not morning yet. Koutarou doesn't need to be awake.

A soft weight settles on top of him from above the covers. It centres on his chest, rising and falling as he breathes. It warms him up and sleep comes easily to him.

 

 

"Well, this answers something we were talking about earlier doesn't it."

Considering it's usually a struggle to get to sleep Koutarou basks in the difficulty he has forcing his eyes open. The room around him is bright but the curtains around his bed are pulled. His doctor stands next to his bed and Koutarou is confused as to why he isn't sitting until he sees that Akaashi is for whatever reason curled up in the chair like a cat.

"Akaashi?"

Koutarou doesn't say his name loudly but Akaashi makes a small noise with the utterance of his name. He doesn't wake up.

"What's the time?" He asks his doctor instead.

"Eight o'clock."

Eight? That doesn't seem possible and yet the evidence is all around him. The light shining from behind the curtains, the tray of food he's only just noticed sitting on the table with all of Akaashi's notes stacked next to it. Koutarou remembers them all being on the floor yesterday. Nurses are far too nice to have collected them and stacked them. Then, of course, there's his doctor being here. Checking in on him after a weekend not seeing each other. Checking in on him before he signs on and can only visit once everything else and everyone else in his day is taken care of.

"Shit." If it's eight o'clock and Akaashi is still here it's not a good sign. As much as Koutarou likes the fact that Akaashi stayed with him through the night he shouldn't have, it wasn't something he had planned or even counted on. It goes above and beyond any expectations Koutarou placed on him once he could count the days of the week by whether Akaashi shows up in the afternoons or not. "Akaashi." He still says it softly, because it's the morning and he's not alone in the room or even in his little section of it. "Akaashi!" A little louder, because Akaashi doesn't seem receptive to the idea of waking up at all.

Koutarou pulls the covers off himself to see that he's still fully dressed from last night. He must have fallen asleep while watching the movie. The covers he's pushed off aren't even his, his bed still sits nearly perfectly made beneath him save for where he's been rolling around on it during the night. The thought comes again, nurses are far too nice. Covering him in extra blankets because he fell asleep on top of his instead of beneath them. "Akaashi!" A final call, a warning. Something to convince himself that if Akaashi hates what Koutarou is about to do he will at least be able to claim that he really did try to wake Akaashi up before stooping to this.

Nothing.

Koutarou brushes his hand through Akaashi's hair. Front to back. Again. Akaashi has really soft hair. Especially soft given that he hasn't washed it recently. Koutarou brings his hand down the side of Akaashi's face and this is where finally Koutarou starts to see more of a reaction. His nose crinkles, his hand bats Koutarou's away, but he keeps coming back. There seems to be a sensitive section just below his ear. Koutarou continues brushing over it and eventually Akaashi cracks his eyes open.

"Bokuto-san..."

"Morning Akaashi!" The loudness, the exuberance has Akaashi frowning. It evolves into something full of shock, confusion, eventually tinting his cheeks red with embarrassment when Koutarou's doctor can't hide a laugh at whatever he thinks from what he's watching.

"Um?" Akaashi looks over to him, sinking further into the chair while simultaneously flicking his eyes around the room. "Good morning." Akaashi directs at Koutarou's doctor.

"Good morning." He responds with a smile. Koutarou reads in this one that he's entertained. Happy, but not for himself. 

"I ah--" Akaashi looks at him but Koutarou can only shrug. He doesn't know what Akaashi is trying to say. "I'm sorry for intruding."

"No worries!" Koutarou watches as his doctor cards his hands through Akaashi's hair the same way he often moves through Koutarou's. Akaashi seems to still under the touch and the hand quickly moves away. "I was just saying to Koutarou-kun that you seem to be the answer to something we were discussing a little while ago!"

Akaashi doesn't look like he takes comfort in being the topic of conversation between them. Although Koutarou is sure that Akaashi has never come up between them at all. It must be his doctor's way of having fun with Akaashi. Some weird form of hazing for being caught spending the night in Koutarou's room. Which in itself is something amazing. Koutarou knows that visitors don't actually get kicked out as soon as visiting hours end unless they're being disruptive - something almost laughable to think of Akaashi being - but it's still strange that he's managed to survive the entire night without being asked to leave.

"Well Koutarou-kun, I'll come check in on you again later. I see you're in good hands for now although I'm sure you two have some things to discuss."

That's all he says before he leaves.

"He was nice," Akaashi says slowly. As if it's just courtesy for him to say this but he's not quite sure whether to believe in the words or not.

"That's my doctor he's great!" Koutarou affirms. "Anyway, Akaashi you need to leave like right now!"

Akaashi frowns once more. "Yes, I am sorry for overstaying my welcome."

"No, no, no! You've got it all wrong!" Koutarou waves away Akaashi's concern, going to far as to bring his hands up to Akaashi's face. One hand smooths over the crease on his nose that comes with his frown, the other goes back to that soft spot below his ear. Akaashi shivers, but at least he stops looking sad and apologetic. "You really need to leave for school. Like right now. You said exams started today right?"

Akaashi freezes. His entire body going stiff and Koutarou feels the change beneath his hands. "Exams." Koutarou can read the panic on his face.

"Leave," he says, "now."

Akaashi doesn't bother with courtesy after the words. He rushes to the side of Koutarou's bed. He picks up a jacket, he collects his notes. He packs both into the bag he brought with him yesterday and then as if realising that outside in the real world it's actually winter and cold he pulls the jacket back out. "I don't even have my uniform." Koutarou hears him say under his breath. "I'll have to go get changed as well."

Koutarou hates that on this day of all days sleep has finally come easily to him. Usually, he sleeps fitfully, waking often. If it had been the case overnight he could have woken up much earlier to send Akaashi on his way. Instead, Akaashi is now potentially late and freaking out over that in addition to being wary of the exams that await him over the course of the day.

"Good luck!" Koutarou calls out as Akaashi disappears behind the curtain. He doesn't reply, doesn't offer a farewell, but Koutarou doesn't mind. He gets up to open the curtains fully, taking in the sun in the sky and hoping that Akaashi doesn't run into too much trouble on his way to school.

 

 

Akaashi visits early for once, the occasion making it special. Kuroo is there too and Koutarou likes the fact that these two people are helping him pack up to leave. There isn't a lot to do, but it's taxing to put everything that's just been lying around for weeks back into a bag. To chase the chaos of his room into something manageable for him to carry back to school. Back home. Finally. He's even looking forward to being back. To training and practice and knowing Akaashi better now for this time away. To figuring out what he'll need to do to pass the exams he missed.

Akaashi doesn't actually help him pack much, neither does Kuroo. He wants to pretend that it has something to do with them respecting the privacy of what he has in his drawers. For the few items from home he finds precious enough to bring with him. But he knows it's not. Akaashi has his phone out filming the entire thing, and Kuroo sits at the end of the bed making comments on every little thing that Koutarou throws into his bag. Delighting in the fact that Koutarou has to tip everything out over the bed to start again because it doesn't all fit.

"This seems like it's going to take a while, I'm going to get a drink."

Akaashi leaves the room and Koutarou sinks into the armchair that Akaashi usually occupies. He's sure that packing to come here hadn't taken up so much energy, hadn't been so draining. But it must have been.

"Akaashi seems nice."

"He is," Koutarou agrees. "I was worried about leaving the team while I was here but I think it's been in good hands."

"He's the vice-captain?"

"Mm." Koutarou sits up to start sorting through the pile of clothes on his bed. It seems the easiest place to start. "He's probably a better captain than me, but he's only a first year so he'll have to wait until next year to take that spot."

"You should trust in yourself more," Kuroo says, draping himself unhelpfully over Koutarou's back. Inhibiting him from sorting through anything else with the additional weight. "He trusts in you."

Koutarou shakes him off. "You hardly know him."

"I know he moved the ball to you a lot in our game, I know he visits you three times a week even though you didn't want visitors, I know he cared enough to sit and watch that movie with you last weekend even when he had exams the next day."

"That's just here, though. We don't talk much at school."

“It still means something," Kuroo says. "It means a lot more spending time with someone outside of being obligated to."

"I'm the captain, it's kind of an obligation."

Kuroo shakes his head. "He came because he wanted to, because he was worried about you. And in my expert opinion, you should hold on to him.” Koutarou looks up at Kuroo, confusion surely marring his features. “You don’t let go of someone who looks at you like that.” He's even more confused.

Akaashi walks back into the room. Two steaming styrofoam cups in his hands. "I thought they would help warm us up before we leave."

Koutarou lets his eyes swing back to Kuroo. His eyes gleam, and there’s a playful smile across his lips, but the intensity behind everything he sees is what makes Koutarou swallow anything that he wants to say. That Kuroo has the wrong idea, that it’s just Akaashi, they’re friends, best friends maybe but only because of this, captains. He swallows the words because he knows that Kuroo won’t accept them. He just keeps Kuroo's in his head as he goes back to sorting through his things.

He doesn't even remember bringing this much stuff in with him. He came with one bag, but nothing seems to fit back into it.

Akaashi sighs, setting the cups down on the table and in only five minutes he's zipping up Koutarou's bag. "What would you do without me?"

It's a rhetorical question. What would Koutarou do? He left the team in Akaashi's hands, he left himself in Akaashi's hands, his situation. He opened himself up to Akaashi when he didn't want anyone to know. Akaashi smiles through the words, some degree of fondness present. As if he knows how much he's done, as if knowing that all of Koutarou's time here would have been so much different without him knowing. Kuroo is Kuroo but Akaashi is Akaashi and Akaashi is the one who came for him. Just for him, to see him and talk to him and to ask how he's doing and to admonish him for not doing classwork in any of his time away.

Half of Akaashi's smile forms in his eyes. The rest is in his body. In its openness. His lips barely quirk. But it's the catch of light in his eyes, shining green where they rest on Koutarou. In the way he leans into Koutarou's space, picking up Koutarou's bag and draping it over his shoulder. In reaching down to press a hot drink into Koutarou's hands and picking up the discharge forms on the table to fold into his own pockets. Somewhere safer than Koutarou's.

Koutarou has never paid much attention to the way Akaashi looks at him, but if this is how it's always been. This softness, openness, something different from the way Akaashi has always appeared to him-- 

He turns to Kuroo, who winks before they clasp hands and trade pats on the back. A farewell for now, but Koutarou has his contact sitting in his phone, a hello for another time.

"Seriously," he says, and Koutarou takes heed. "Hold on tight."


End file.
